


Somatoform

by fandom_oracle



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Lydia can relate to an extent, Lydia’s trauma is acknowledged, My submission for Gen Week, She can be cruel at times, Theo has multiple eating disorders and body dysmorphia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-20 03:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15525402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_oracle/pseuds/fandom_oracle
Summary: Lydia discovers a secret about Theo.





	1. Chapter 1

Visiting Scott McCall every thursday hadn’t become quite like a chore, but still instilled a sense of obligation on the redhead. It's true that she's never been close to Scott in the way that Stiles had been, and he's never pushed the boundaries of their friendship. She'd helped him before with his grades, and surprisingly for her, the werewolf had turned out to be more academically skilled than she'd first assumed. He was the only one who could relate to Lydia's fascination with notorious women in STEM fields, especially in life sciences. Sure, everyone knew Marie Curie, but Scott is the only one of her friends with whom she felt comfortable rambling about Mary Lyon's theory of dosage compensation, or the trials of Lynn Margulis' hypothesis on the symbiotic nature of ancient mitochondria.

Scott made Lydia feel comfortable and since their lives had slowed down a bit as they waited for their college semesters to start, she decided to cultivate that relationship. It seemed clear to her that Scott too would capitalize on having a friend with whom he could talk about something not quite supernatural, even if that were only their mutual fondness for the current developments on the use of gene therapy for treatment of sickle-cell anemia.

Melissa was rarely home, which was quite a pity, and Lydia had reckoned Scott had little love for eating lunch alone. They'd struck a balance, visiting each other every tuesday and thursday, ensuring their reciprocal psychological wellbeing... and now, it was the redhead's turn to head to the McCalls’ house.

**

It had never been cumbersome to ignore the presence of Theo Raeken in the house; she's suspected the chimera felt ill-at-ease sitting next to her after having caused her to be institutionalized on Eichen House. She would not hold that against him, as Lydia has little desire to encounter him as well, despite his current state of living with the McCalls. Still, she reveried, it would be unfair to expect Scott to keep the two apart, and she resigned herself not to entitle her eyes to drifting towards her former aggressor; as such, there she sat, between Scott McCall and Theo Raeken as they feasted on a meal that was oddly undemanding in respect of what she usually ate there.

"Um, Scott... did you make this?" The girl asked reticently, attempting not to sound indelicate.

"Oh, right... yeah!" Scott, his heart pure as it usually were, failed to notice the tinge of criticism, and evinced a smile that caused Lydia to feel contrition for her somewhat scathing remark. "I'm trying to be less dependent on Mom, I guess"

She tried to drift her attention back to the boy on her left side as she flashed him a bright smile, containing the silver-tongued witticisms she might've reserved for anyone other than Scott McCall had they offered her the same bland cooking as was laid down in front of her. That was an arduous task, as it may be, with Theo Raeken gorging himself on the meal as if it were his last one - again, Lydia attempted not to be unkind, understanding that Theo had been destitute for quite a while before Melissa felt comfortable letting him back in, and the effects could be seen.

Theo had lost the formerly majestic build he'd acquired, having thinned enough that Scott's clothing looked bigger on him than usual (more than the little surplus size that was to be expected as the chimera was notoriously shorter in height). The atrophy didn't just cost him the shape of a bodybuilder, it was as if health itself had been withdrawing from him. The boy had returned to shaving when cloistered by the McCalls' arms, but the skin of his face hang loose, and deep holes on his cheeks would've been visible if the boy would momentarily stop chewing.

The boy before her looked less like the unceremoniously cocky Theo Raeken and more like a street waif.

**

"Theo doesn’t hang around a lot after lunch, so don’t feel bad." Scott explained candidly, after Theo had abruptly stopped feeding himself and returned to wherever he resided. "And just between us, don't go into the hallway bathroom anytime soon. He usually gets all sick after eating, we can hear him puking. Maybe it's somatoform...? It's definitely not my mom's food, and I’ve been worried about it but I don’t want to push him, you know?"

"Wait" Lydia's analytical mind began twisting itself, dissecting Scott's previous statement. "You're saying that Theo regularly vomits?"

"Yeah."

"After every meal?"

"Pretty much."

"Almost immediately after it?"

"Umm... yeah, what's the deal?" Scott's confused expression turned to her, and Lydia would've thought his cluelessness adorable were them not under the current circumstances.

"Scott, it's not somatoform, it's psychiatric." She delivered matter-of-factly. "Theo's not puking, he's purging."

**

Lydia rushed to the washroom before anyone could stop her, understanding better than most what the boy had been doing, and her suspicions were confirmed: as she opened the bathroom door that he'd casually neglected to lock, she found Theo Raeken, kneeling over the porcelain of Melissa's relatively inexpensive toilet seat, a quasi-transparent liquid leaking over his chin.

"Get out!" The chimera's first instinct had taken over, screaming towards the redhead now standing at the door with a critical eye, his eyes flashing golden in a way that might've scared Lydia one or two murderous supernatural creatures ago. He reiterated when he saw her not retreating. "I said..."

"Or what?" Lydia had always been more clever than anyone gave her credit for; and as good as the chimera had been at deception, reading through people was her game, a skill necessary for her to maneuver a world that wanted her gone. "You're going to claw my face out? If I scream to Scott, he'll take you out in a heartbeat. Do you really want to go back to being a hobo?"

The tension in the air seemed to fade a bit, but Theo still tried to feign leverage he did not have. So, as becoming of Lydia Martin, she went on:

"And that's just Scott. You can bet I can make every supernatural in Beacon Hills hear me. How long will it be before Stiles, Parrish, or worse of all Malia, comes to slash your face off? So trust me, it's better for the both of us if you _keep, your mouth, shut_." She'd fractioned the last four words into three sections, adding an emphasizing stop between them.

She sat on the floor, trying desperately to avoid touching any remnants of chimera puke that might've fallen onto the unadorned bathroom floor. With a lone piece of toilet paper, she cleaned his formerly beautiful face, in a way that would've been comically maternal, with a pestering child attempting to dodge her.

"Your hair's longer now, you'd need a hairband for that."

"For what?"

"Purging." Lydia replied quickly.

"You do it too?" Theo questioned her, fingers darting around nervously in an manner uncharacteristic of him.

"Used to."

"Why are you doing... this?" His query was now less worrisome than it was demanding.

"Because I get it." The ginger girl's reply had been quick, if unvarnished. "It's called bulimia nervosa, a psychiatric condition with genetic markers but strongly affected by environmental stimuli. It's known to be connected to irregular production of serotonin and, in women, correlated with an excessive amount of androgens. The general consensus is that it involves cycles of binge-eating and, followed by strong guilt, a period of purging. Vomiting is common, but not the only method."

"They gotta put a name on everything now?"

"I had the condition during my prepubescence. When your parents fight, and try their hardest to find a reason to tell the other they're raising their daughter wrong, when every mistake you make is put under a microscope... you think that it's your fault. That you have to be a better daughter, that you have to be perfect." Lydia continued her monologue. "Plus, I thought it was going to be easier, y'know, being beautiful. Turns out beautiful girls don't have it as well as I thought they did...but that's for another day.”

"I continued doing it to the point where it became... nice" Amid Theo's scowl, the girl kept on. "Or, not nice, exactly, but it starts making you feel good. You feel proud of yourself when you purge. And you keep doing it, because you want to like yourself, but it never lasts. And you keep doing it more and more, until your teeth are rotting and you have to be hospitalized because there's a hole in your esophagus."

**

"I don't want your sob story" Theo said somberly.

"You shouldn't do that, Theo..."

"I said..." Almost too quickly for the redhead to process, his eyes glowed bright yellow again as he jumped up, grabbed the arms of the tiny girl in front of him, and pinned her to a wall. Lydia knew Theo didn't want to seriously hurt her, or he'd have lifted her a tad higher and caused her head to hit the metal bar that served as a towel hanger. "I don't want to hear your fucking sob story!"

"Well, then." Her previously warm voice turned cold, though she was calmer than most would've been in her situation. Theo released her, his claws having left dents in her skin that were bleeding ever-so-slightly. Lydia could only watch as the wild chimera curled himself in a fetal position and the farthest possible edge of the small bathroom, hiding his face. She knew at this moment Theo would rather have a hole in his esophagus than show any kind of vulnerability

"Don't. I'm calling Morell; she has got to be useful for something"

"I'm not mad."

"Never said you were."

"Why are you doing this? You're not like Scott."  
"I'm doing this because I'm not like Scott, he’d do it because he doesn’t want to see you in pain." Theo had never understood how cruel could a teenage girl sound, until now; Lydia's voice wasn't like a blade cutting through him, it was like hypothermia. It killed you slowly, and the more you thought about the cold, the more it hurt. "I'm doing this because I want to go home and know that I'm better than you. I'm doing this because I hope it hurts, I pray it hurts to know that the person helping you owes you nothing. That you don't deserve my help."

Proud of her response, Lydia placed her phone between her red locks and her ear, turning her back to the sobbing boy, as the bathroom door closed behind her, a satisfied smirk on her face.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Theo Raeken couldn't wait to get in the luxurious car parked in front of the gates of the mental health facility. Though he couldn't see the redhead in it, he could smell the anxiety that she was surprisingly skilled at hiding.  If it weren’t for his sense of smell, he wouldn't have known she felt that way at all; and really, who could blame her? He'd been the one responsible for her being hospitalized there for months. 

 

The memory came to him fresh with a wave of shame which he'd thought himself as being above.

 

Your plan worked, bitch, the words flashed in his mind bitterly before he could catch himself, his restraint not to indulge in the violent imagery echoing in his brain giving him little validation.

 

He'd entered the car as quietly as possible, catching Lydia applying lipstick with the rear view mirror. With effort, he calmed down, leaving only his good old pal shame to fill his thoughts. This had been his fifth appointment with Dr. Marin Morrell, former druid emissary to Deucalion's alpha pack, one of the world's most skilled druids, and also probably one of the few sane members of the Eichen administration.

 

"So, how was it?" Lydia asked curiously, which was quite unusual. They usually spent these rides in silence.

 

_ You tell me, you're the one who should be there _ , he wanted to tell her, but restrained himself.

 

"Pointless." Theo responded objectively, as there wasn't much of a point in lying to Lydia; she already hated him and he really didn't have much to lose. "She just sits there, asking stupid questions and thinking she can crack me like a lab rat."

 

_ Anyway, _ the little voice in his head said, it's not like you care.

 

He might've said this, but, to his own surprise, he didn't want to risk pushing her too far. Lydia was... refreshing in how she didn't ever pretend that it was all okay between them. There wasn't that awkwardness with Scott where every act of kindness from him made Theo want to gut-punch himself. Or that tension with Malia in the room, where she spent every moment trying to contain both her murderous rage and their coyote bond, causing her immense frustration. 

 

Or, worse, a room with Stiles. The boy's taunts didn't hurt him, mostly because he knew he deserved them, but the way he wore Theo's very presence as a prize, to prove that he was right about him not being trustworthy? That made him feel like an object.

 

Lydia loathed him openly, alleviating his guilt to an extent, but she had no desire to hurt him, so his presence didn't upset her. She was clever enough to enact her revenge in a way that wouldn't be morally questionable. Theo could only admire her skill at mind games.

 

"Then why are you going?" She said with a sly smirk, breaking down the little control Theo had over his tongue. "It's not like I can make you."

 

"Why do you care?"

 

"It may not be obvious to your narcissistic self..." She began, her tone acidic as usual. "...But I was bitten and left to die by a stranger who violated my mind, kidnapped and nearly killed in human sacrifice by my English teacher, I discovered one of my friends was possessed by a Japanese fox demon, that my grandmother went insane because of powers like mine, and that my best friend turns into a corpse-stealing flaming monster. I'm in Scott's pack now, and if I can tolerate Peter Hale, I can get over you putting me in Eichen House. So yeah, Theo, I care because I actually want you to get better. Is that too nice for your deceitful little brain to process?"

 

**

 

Theo looked at himself in Lydia’s bathroom mirror. He often stayed with the Martins after his sessions, and Lydia never questioned why he'd asked them not go right to Scott's the second after. Under normal circumstances Natalie might've assumed him and Lydia had been dating, but with the way he currently looked, he doubted his appearance was anything like Lydia's previous boyfriends.

 

For starters, his hair had grown slightly long, though not enough to warrant a haircut. It framed his face differently, though not necessarily worse. If he had better self-care it might've been a passable style, but he barely had the energy to bathe. He usually did so before some of the sessions with Morell, but  today had not been one of those times. Though he shaved, he failed to do so at a regular rate, resulting in an irregular and poorly-maintained stubble that still made him look somewhat like a street person (which he supposed he was), and his flaccid skin made his relatively unpronounced cheeks pop in a way that was not, in fact, attractive, but disturbingly corpse-like.

 

None of his clothes fit him, as they were mostly things Scott, Stiles, and Liam handed him down. And if he wasn’t filling out  Liam's clothes, then something was really wrong. He'd drastically lost his shape in the weeks he'd spent homeless, watching his body gradually deflate due to the scarce and irregular eating schedules. He'd changed completely, to the point of being almost unrecognizable.

 

It wasn't just the loss though. When you're starving, you don't get to be picky, and Theo had to recognize that his eating habits had not been very healthy. Ever since being allowed to live with the McCalls, his diet has spiraled into eating whatever Scott or Melissa prepared, and he could barely control himself. It's like his body went on autopilot and he couldn't make decisions, passively watching as his hands brought it into his mouth. He'd been bloated and gained some weight in all the places he shouldn't, and the thought of that made his heart race faster, a sense of urgency flooding through him: he had to do something about it.

 

**

 

Theo knew he was in trouble when Lydia opened her bathroom door to find a bloodied hand, a cracked mirror, and remnants of vomit in her sink. He'd managed to go an entire week without purging, only to fail. The thought of the word failure stuck to his mind, causing his anxiety to spiral even more out of control: he'd punched the bathroom mirror and, though his wounds were already beginning to heal, the blood was still visible to the redhead staring through the now-open door.

 

"Theo?" She said softly, as he tried his hardest not to retreat, concern seeping through her voice. "What happened?!"

 

"I..." Before he could finish the sentence, a knowing look on her green eyes stopped him.

 

"Do you want to talk about it?"

 

"You sound like Morrell."

 

"Well, I'm not." The worry faded, replaced quickly with the mean streak he was used to. She kept looking at him accusatorily, and Theo knew he wasn't getting away with doing something like this and not spilling the beans.

 

"It's just..." Theo felt tongue-tied again. 

 

Talking about this would be useless. It was so low on the list of ways the Doctors had mistreated him that he felt ridiculous caring so much about it. 

 

“When I started growing into my teens, the Doctors realized I was... attractive, I suppose.” Theo pushed himself to say. ”And they  wanted to weaponize that. Though they didn't observe it up close, I had to keep myself in shape, y'know? They thought I'd be more useful that way. So that's basically what happened - I had to look like I do, or, well, did, and I never really had another option, it was that or failure. So when I started living with Scott..."

 

"...You couldn't deal with the freedom?" Lydia asked.

 

"I guess. When I started realizing I look ugly as fuck now, I had to do something. I sometimes puked to meet their physical examination standards, so I thought I could do that regularly. It makes me feel like I'm still doing something, y'know? Like I'm not just letting myself look like that. When eat wrong, I get super nervous and I just gotta act."

 

"What's even worse is that I've never looked like anything other than what I did, in terms of shape. This body... it doesn't feel like it's mine. It's like it's fucking trapping me and sometimes I want to claw it out, leave it, and find the actual me. Or maybe just hurt myself to test if I'm really there, because I don't see me at all when I look at it."

 

"That was... oddly poetic." Said the redhead, chuckling while rolling her eyes. "Wouldn't have figured you of all people had an artistic streak."

 

"I wouldn't have figured you of all people could see the future!"

 

"It's not like that!" She replied in faux-anger, pushing him off the bed they were sitting in. They both chuckled for a bit, a comfortable couple of seconds, as they realized who they were talking to, an awkwardness falling into the air.

 

"Sorry." The word leaves his mouth as Lydia looks at him with an unreadable expression in her face.

 

"Don't be, Theo. I'm not sure I forgive you. I'm not even sure I will ever forgive you." Lydia says with honesty. "But we've been doing this for a while, and the truth is: I want you to change. I want you to be better, to get better. Maybe we'll never be friends the normal way, but right now, that can be good enough, can't it?"

 

"Yeah, good enough." Theo replies, giving her one of the few genuine smiles he's ever had since a long time ago.


End file.
